An Interview with Celia Martinez of the
Worker-Controlled Brukman Textile Factory in Buenos Aires by Benjamin Dangl
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 31, 2005First Published in
UpsideDownWorld.org

One
day before Argentina’s economic crash on December 19, 2001, fifty-two
workers from the Brukman Textile Factory, the majority of them women,
refused to continue working until their bosses handed over their
back-wages. Plagued by debt and gradual bankruptcy, the owners hadn’t paid
the workers their weekly paycheck for fifteen days. The bosses demanded
that the workers return to their stations, but the sewing machines
remained silent.

Jacobo Brukman, the owner of factory, told
the workers, “If you think you can run the factory better than we can then
here is the key.” But instead of handing over the key, Brukman fled the
building. The workers, many of whom didn’t even have the two pesos needed
to take the bus home, remained in the factory, placing banners out the
windows that said, “We Want Our Salaries!” Protesters in support of the
workers showed up the following day. In a telephone conversation, the
Brukman owners offered the workers two suits a piece instead of their
salaries. The workers refused the offer and constructed a road blockade in
front of the building in protest.

Soon after, a Brukman client contracted a
large order of Bermuda shorts. The workers produced them, using much of
the money from the deal to pay the gas and electric bill of the factory.
It was at this time that they began running the business themselves,
organizing contracts, salaries and general managerial activity.

What started out as a simple demand for
back-wages had turned into a fierce struggle for worker control of Brukman.
Driven by a need to survive and support their families, the workers tried
through legal means to gain ownership, fighting against politicians,
judges and police in riot gear. Political differences among the workers
themselves threatened to weaken and divide this struggle. Yet more than
four years after they confronted their old bosses, the workers are still
in charge of Brukman. Their fight has become a symbol of the recuperated
factory movement in Argentina and an inspirational example to workers and
activists around the world.

Celia Martinez, a worker at Brukman, has
been part of this struggle from the beginning. In this interview she talks
about the worker takeover, how the factory is currently organized, the
difficulties of working closely with others in a cooperative, and how this
experience has completely changed her political orientation.

Benjamin Dangl: The workers at
Brukman have been through a very profound experience. First you were all
simply demanding the back wages from the previous boss, and then you ended
up taking over the factory and running it yourselves. Which do you prefer
now, working for the old boss or operating as a cooperative? Why?

Celia Martinez: In the beginning we
just wanted to see the bosses to talk about our wages. Later on, after the
19-20 of December (when the economy crashed, protests filled the streets
and President De la Rua was forced from office) we saw what was happening
in the country; three governments came and went in just a few weeks. The
leftists were all in the streets and they came together. I believe it was
the leftists that sustained this uprising and made it what it was. The
P.T.S. (Socialist Workers Party) worked the hardest so that this uprising
would be well known throughout the world.

It was the left that supported us the most.
The workers of Brukman were opportunists. Opportunists because we
surrounded ourselves with people that gave us confidence, that told us we
could fight and take over the factory. We made the most of the time we had
to put the factory under work control without any legality and fought long
and hard against the government…

I hope that we can be able to unite all of
the recuperated factories and create a strong movement and defend each
other, so that the factories continue to be of the workers. But now we
just saw an attack at Zanon, (a worker run ceramic factory outside Buenos
Aires). The wife of a compañero was beaten up. They cut all of her
face and body up. So what can we hope for? We don’t know.

What we want now is to be able to work and
earn our salaries. It is very difficult for these recuperated factories to
enter into the market. Those that are entering the market well are the
metallurgical factories. They are entering the market easily, but the
textiles, for now, are not doing well at all. We barely have any work and
our clients don’t respond.

We have some fear that Chinese products will
enter the market. The same thing happened in the 1990s when Menem was
president, when most large textile factories went to other countries for
cheaper labor. We can’t do something like that. It is very dangerous that
Chinese products could invade the industry and the textiles could be left
with nothing again.

BD: How is Brukman organized now? Do
you have assemblies every week? Does everyone have an equal vote and
receive an equal salary?

CM: We all charge the same for our
work and each person has one vote. The assemblies are held once every week
and every fifteen days, depending on the necessity that there is. Sometime
we have them twice or three times a week, it depends on what we discuss.
Now we have a direct commission, with a president and secretary etc.
Before it wasn’t like this. There was an internal commission and nothing
more.

BD: When you get together each week,
what are some of the issues that you discuss?

CM: It almost always has to do with
the work, what we need, legal problems and problems with the machines.
It’s always something like this.

BD: What is the secret of maintaining
a successful cooperative?

CM: It still is not a successful
cooperative so I cannot give you the recipe (she laughs). I believe that
the recipe would be -- I am not giving you it really because it is still
not a successful cooperative -- a lot of democracy and class
consciousness.

BD: In an interview in the book Sin
Patron, conducted by the writers atLaVaca.org, your
co-worker Matilda Adorno talked about what the early assemblies were like,
just after the factory was taken over: “For many of us it was difficult to
understand how to live with each other, and treat each other equally. Now
we know what it is like in the other person’s shoes and we have made
peace. In the assemblies we would be able to pull each other’s eyes out in
order to defend our respective points of views. But afterwards we’d drink
mate (thick herbal! tea) together.”

Could you expand on this experience?

CM: In the beginning we thought that
all the compañeros were equal and you’d try to see with these eyes,
thinking that everyone has the same objective. But sometimes this just
isn’t the case. Eventually you have to become accustomed to discussing in
assemblies everything that you’re worried about, everything that you want
and express your own position -- the position of your work politics and
your human position. It is important to discuss this in assemblies, but
when the assembly is over, the discussion is over as well...

BD: What is the biggest challenge for
the recuperated factories that function as cooperatives?

CM: The challenge is to be able to
enter the market. It is very difficult. A capitalist could lose thousands
of dollars, but we cannot because we don’t have the same economic strength
that a capitalist has. We live on a day-to-day basis.

BD: In an interview with
LaVaca.org, you said that your political orientation changed a lot
throughout this experience. Could you explain this change?

CM: I used to be a Peronista, like my
husband and children. But when we took over the factory I went to ask
Peronistas in my community for help. I went to a Peronista Senator that
lives in my neighborhood for help and advice because I really didn’t know
what to do. And he never responded, but the left gave me all the responses
and helped me understand that I had to fight until the end. I think that
of all the struggles that happened in these recent years, Brukman has come
out on top. It has been an enormous experience that is famous all over the
world. Journalists from all over the world have come to see this…The
Peronistas would have tried to make a deal so that our old boss would come
back and we would end up like slaves again.

BD: I was studying here in 2002 and
there was a stronger social and political consciousness then with all of
the assemblies, protests and the taking over of factories. And now much
has changed. The people of Buenos Aires in general don’t support the
protesters, piqueteros and the recuperated factory movement nearly
as much as before. Why has this changed so much?

CM: Because the political situation
in the country has changed. Many people believe in President Kirchner,
because he appears to be a President of the semi-left, a president that
appears to be with the people, but this is not true. For example, I think
he will continue to pay the IMF.

BD: Does this change in consciousness
have to do with people earning higher wages?

CM: There is at least a little more
work. The middle class is recuperating and they were the ones in the
streets in the assemblies because they had all of their money in the
corrolito (in 2002, when people couldn’t get their money out of the
bank because the financial infrastructure of the country was bankrupt.)
This is not the case anymore; their economic situation is improving.

Benjamin Dangl
had traveled and worked as a journalist in Argentina during and after the
country’s 2001 crisis. He is the editor of
www.UpsideDownWorld.org, an online magazine about activism and
politics in Latin America and
www.TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events.